last man standing
by Medie
Summary: it's the biggest hail mary in history


title: last man standing...  
author: M.  
feedback: meep  
rating: pg13  
pairing: Sheppard/Weir  
Spoilers: Season 9 SG1, very general S2 for SGA  
Disclaimers: Sheppard. Not mine. Weir. Not mine.  
Author's Note: Written for **sgalvin** for the beta!  
Summary: the biggest hail mary in history...

"last man standing"  
by m.  
----------  
_Two months out…_

"They're dead." For the first time John spoke the words everyone was thinking but couldn't bring themselves to voice. Speaking softly, almost reverently, he continued, "They're all dead and we're all that's left." He looked away from Elizabeth's stricken expression, focusing his gaze on the horizon. It was hard not to think about the people back home. The dead.

"We don't know for certain yet." Elizabeth disagreed, her automatic protest hollow and wooden. "We won't know until Daedalus returns." She smiled hopefully as she joined him at the railing. "There could be other reasons, something to account for the delay."

And pigs might sprout feathers and announce themselves the reincarnation of the dodo.

He exhaled heavily, trying to breathe out the tension coiled in his spine. "They're dead, Elizabeth." He said it as pragmatically as he could, pushing each word home with the force of a bullet. "And if that message from Stargate Command was any kind of indication so is everyone else on Earth."

She was quiet for a long moment, her features composed and enigmatic. Some days she was entirely too easy to read, those were the days when he had a hard time believing she was the renowned diplomat that everyone proclaimed her to be. Then there were these days when he saw only too easily just how she'd gotten that reputation. He truly couldn't read what was going on behind that mask of composure she presented to the world on those days.

"I can't accept that, John," she answered quietly, "I just can't. The idea that…No. No I can't do it and I won't do it. Not yet. Not while there's hope."

There was no hope; he knew it and she knew it. But he knew something else, too; she wasn't about to admit it. Not to him. Not to anyone. As bullheaded as he could be, Elizabeth had him beat. She had a stubborn streak that ran deep, right to her core.

He nodded. "All right, I'm not going to fight you on this." He didn't need to. He'd heard the message. The Gate connection from Earth hadn't held long enough to transmit a person but it had sent a single message. General Hank Landry – the new commander of the SGC according to Elizabeth – warning them not to try to come home. His voice had been weary, beaten, and very, very lost. Generals in the United States Air Force did not sound those things. They did not ever project the air of defeat.

Landry had been the very definition of defeat. The SGC had failed.

Whatever they had been up against, whatever they had been fighting, they had lost.

What exactly they had lost to hadn't been included in the message. Whether Landry hadn't had the time to tell them or the message cut off before he could no one was sure. It had ended abruptly, cut off when the wormhole shut down and no amount of McKay's tinkering had managed to yield anything else from the signal.

It was exactly why Elizabeth had risked sending the Daedalus home. Despite Landry's warning everyone on Atlantis wanted to know what had happened. They needed to know what had gone wrong and, secretly, they all clung to the hope that the message was wrong.

They clung to the hope that Daedalus would arrive back on Earth and find everyone alive and well. Some sort of alien deception, the Wraith maybe, trying to convince them they were cut off and alone. He'd thought the same for a while. He still wanted to believe that one. That there were a bunch of Wraith, or maybe the Genii, out there somewhere cooking up some scheme to steal the city away from them.

But Daedalus had been gone too long and John was beginning to suspect that whatever had gotten the SGC had gotten it as well.

"John…" Elizabeth turned to rest a hand on his. "You know as well as I do…there are a million and one things which could have gone wrong that don't involve the utter destruction of the human race." She tried to laugh it off but it sounded brittle and forced. Her belief was beginning to show the same cracks his did. Before long she'd admit the truth herself and part of him didn't want that to happen.

If she gave up hope then it all became real.

_Three months out…_

"My god…"

Staring at the screen, Elizabeth's hand slipped over her mouth, fingers pressing against her lips as her horrified eyes took in the images playing out before her until she couldn't look any longer. When she reached that point, she turned her head and hid her face.

"They were cut off from the Gate." Caldwell explained quietly. "The decision was made not to use it. If they spread the infection…" His voice was death incarnate. The sound of it, the feel of it, it spread through the room and the people in it. Infecting them all with the certainty of the knowledge he carried. "They couldn't take the risk."

"How many survived?" Carson managed to ask, his voice choked with the truths that none of them could comprehend. The medical aspects of the virus were already playing out in his eyes. The understanding of what had happened to the bodies on the screen.

"Not many." The Colonel answered then he mustered up a faint smile, mocking and bitter though it was. "You'll appreciate the irony, Doctor…the survivors all carry the ATA gene. Well, most did. There are a few…which…which owe their survival to extraordinary circumstances."

"Like what, exactly?" Elizabeth brought her head up and looked at him. "What extraordinary circumstances do you mean?" She angled her body so she wouldn't have to face the screen in any way and everyone could see her fighting to pull herself back under control. She was already trying to face this the way she was supposed to. The way she thought they needed her to. "Colonel, what extraordinary circumstances do you mean?"

"Doctor Jackson thinks the Ori left them alive specifically so they could watch humanity die." Caldwell answered finally. "He thinks they wanted to punish them with the knowledge they were responsible." He cleared his throat and shuffled the papers on the desk before him. "We picked up as many as we could, Prometheus is doing the same. We'll head back for more just as soon as we're done here. The infection is non-persistent. Near as we can tell the Ori either have no further interest in Earth's survivors or they're not in the mood to try and convert followers while dodging the Wraith. They're off spreading their happy little message to anyone that will listen and to hell with the rest of us."

"Rodney," her voice shaking, Elizabeth looked over at him, "we're going to need to get the city ready. As much of it powered up as possible." She turned away from the nodding scientist before he could even muster up a stammered response. She had no time for anything beyond the essentials and everyone could see that. She was barely holding it together as it was. If she didn't plow through the thoughts in her mind and just keep on going she was certainly about to fall apart and they would go with her. "Teyla, if your people can…"

"Of course, Doctor Weir," Teyla said with an even voice and a promise in her eyes, "we will do whatever we can to help you. It is not much but whatever we have is yours."

"All right people…" Elizabeth waved them off. "Go."

Caldwell was gone before the others could even get to their feet. The trip back to Earth for the stragglers who were awaiting their return was going to take long enough as it was. He wasn't about to waste even a second. Time was no longer money.

Time was lives.

_Four months out…_

Prometheus limped into orbit above Atlantis with Daedalus playing protective escort. The people that emerged from the wounded vessel were equally damaged. There was a hollow, shell-shocked look in their eyes. They were the living dead: the unlucky few that had seen the apocalypse and lived to remember it walking into a city that should have been a dream but was becoming their tomb.

Watching them walk through the hallways of the city, Elizabeth was painfully aware that it could bcome a very literal tomb if she made but one wrong decision.

"This isn't what I thought it was going to be." She whispered, feeling the warmth of John Sheppard radiating into her back.

He stayed close, one hand touching her waist. "Isn't it?" As if sensing her confusion to his words, John immediately continued, "This whole thing started out as one big hail Mary the human race has ever seen…" He paused and she knew he was watching the monitor as well. "It just got a whole lot bigger."

She closed her eyes against the weight of it, wanting this to be anything but what it was. "I don't think I can do this, John. I can't…They're depending on me to…" She shook her head almost violently. "I can't be what they need me to be! I can't be responsible for what's left of the human race!"

"You're not," he reminded her."There are still humans out there. A lot of them…and I know it's not the same thing and I know right now you can't see this, but you're not in this alone. You're not going to have to carry this responsibility alone. _We're_ sure as hell not going to let you carry this alone…"

He didn't say it but she heard it in his voice. Both the warning and the promise. She loved him for it. For his determination that she wouldn't be alone in all this no matter what she tried or how determined she got. John hadn't let her hide behind regulations and appearances when it came to their relationship and he wasn't about to let her hide behind her own fears now.

She had never thought she would be grateful for his inherent laisse fair attitude toward the chain of command. He followed when he needed to but he saw absolutely nothing wrong with going off book when he felt it necessary. She had always been the opposite. For as much as she talked she clung to the way things were supposed to be. Defying convention on the surface but sticking close to home with it all the same. She had tried to use it to keep him at arm's length when she realized just how far things were going and how deep she had gotten. John had respected her wishes to a point but he had just as stubbornly made a case to the contrary.

"You are a pain in the ass, John Sheppard." She sighed out with more melancholy than the words suggested.

He chuckled with more pain than it had evoked. "If it hurts you're not dead."

She laughed and thought of everything that lay ahead. Their chances…A thousand different things raced through her mind and it all pressed down and she'd never wanted to cry so much in her life. "Then I'll live forever."

finis


End file.
